HOLLOWPOINT

“Hard Target” — Page Nineteen

The problem with trying to find out information is that the data flow goes both ways. Our hero may have been a soldier and probably participated in a few interrogations, but he really should have been more guarded in his speech, especially to a woman who has been a fairly successful (if not actually magical) witch and is probably skilled at cold reads.

Of course, if he’d been more closed-mouth, she might not have given him anywhere near as much information. When you’re telling someone that you’re bound to the spirit of their dead best friend and that she only shows up when you don’t have a soul, a certain amount of explaining is going to be necessary.

You Can Rest When You’re Dead

As for Max-The-Artist, I gotta tell you, the reason this page was delayed was because he was working. And I know this for truth because I myself was prepared to pester him about it if I ever caught him in a free moment, and I couldn’t. Since his wife has gone back to work, Max brings the baby over for my wife and I to tend while he grinds, and grind he does. Fortunately, I myself just finished up a story-editing gig on a Netflix animated series so I could do a proper job of grandparenting, and Max sets up his portable arting studio in our dining room and plugs in his headset and does videoconferences with clients and draws commercials. All damn day.

In a way, he’s been grateful for the comic – he and I have always joked that the best way to get gigs is to have something else you’d rather be doing. Every time he’d start working on the page his agent would call to say he was booked on another job, starting immediately. So the page got delayed but Max got a ton of commercial work out if it. Every time I came in he’d be drawing a hamburger flying apart in three dimensions to display the succulent ingredients or some such thing.

I changed diapers. Been years, but it’s like riding a bicycle. It all comes back.